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← darkroomFELLAS ROUND TF UP BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE HAS MADE MONICA VERY SAD AND MADE HER TEAR UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Monica did pop off doe , WE ARE PROUD OF YOU MONICA)
[Spoilers] Secrets of the Silent Witch - Episode 08 Discussion
Okay, am I missing something, or is there any reason Monica had to go running around looking for the barrier code and re-write it so it would nullify the bomb after it exploded as opposed to just... going to where she knows the bomb is and telling everyone there to get the fuck out?
Like, that feels like a needlessly complicated roundabout solution she in no way needed to do. She can sense the bomb with her mana so she knows where it is, once Casey's incapacitated there's nobody in her way, and judging from how the sky turns from sunset to evening during her search, looking for the barrier code takes way longer than just running back to the warehouse would have. Why not just go tell the prince "Hey, someone left a bomb in here, everyone should clear out"? What's stopping her?
She's literally undercover.
"Hey, prince, someone left a bomb in here and tried to kill me! Let's deal with that!"
Not pictured: any mention of her being the Silent Witch or connected to the Seven Sages
Here's the scene from the Light Novel:
“Please… I’m begging you, Casey… stop the Spiralflame…!”
“No. Even if I were tortured, I would never stop the Spiralflame. Prince Felix’s assassination must be carried out to the end.”
(Should I use voice amplification magic to urge the entire student body to evacuate? …No, that won’t work. My words don’t carry enough weight; they won’t believe me. Should I use wind magic to blow only the Spiralflame into the sky? …No. The Spiralflame is a fixed-type magical device, so it’s probably anchored to the wall or floor. On top of that, it has the property of absorbing surrounding mana, so if I’m careless, it might explode the moment I try to activate my spell.)
In the end, the best option she can think of is to seal the Spiralflame inside a barrier and suppress its flames.
Monica is capable of using remote magic, so from here she can just barely manage to cast a barrier.
The problem is the barrier’s strength. The Spiralflame has enough destructive power to pierce through most barriers.
(If I pour all of my mana into it, I can weaken the Spiralflame’s power… but that’s not enough. Unless I completely suppress it, it’ll ignite the fireworks and cause a catastrophe. The barrier needs to be as strong as Mr. Louis’s…!)
The novel also explains very clearly that because the Spiralflame has the power to break through most magician's barriers, it's also called "Mage Killer", so even someone as powerful as Monica had to borrow Louis's barrier to be able to suppress it completely
Thank you for the explanation
Can I ask a question?
Why does Casey hate Monica?
Because she claims to have hated her from the very first moment, so ever since the incident at the stable, but Casey obviously doesn't know that she was the one who roused the horses or stopped the bandits, and there doesn't seem to be any further explanation. She throws her tea in the trash can, cut the ropes hoping to hurt her...
The reason doesn't even seem to be the fact that she's on the student council because they never talk about it... I'm confused as to what makes her hate Monica and want to deceive her from the very beginning.
I was confused by that too
The anime is skipping a lot of explanation, so I'll paste the scenes from the light novel here.
Here's the part where it explains why Casey threw Monica's tea in the trash can:
If she became Monica’s friend, she might be able to hear about the second prince’s schedule. That’s why Casey actively interacted with Monica.
Even discarding Monica’s tea leaves during the tea party class was done so that, by extending a helping hand to Monica in her time of trouble, Casey could win her absolute trust. In this way, Casey had always been aiming for a chance to assassinate the second prince.
The scene where Casey says that she hates Monica:
“I hate you, so I decided to do a little prank on you, Monica. Honestly, I aimed that lumber to fall right at you… but I slipped up, and it came crashing toward me instead. What a mess, huh?”
Casey forced a laugh, trying to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
But the cracks were obvious. Her words sounded rehearsed, her voice rushed, and her eyes never once met Monica’s.
She was lying.
“…That’s not true,” Monica said softly.
“It is. From the very first time we met, I hated you.”
The words pierced Monica’s chest. Normally, she might have lowered her head, fighting back tears.
But this time, something stronger than pain rose inside her—an undeniable sense of wrongness.
“What are you hiding, Casey?”
“Nothing. I hate you. So I tried to hurt you. That’s all.”
Here's the scene where it explains why she cut the ropes:
At last, Monica understood.
The reason Casey had knocked over the lumber in the eastern warehouse and staged an accident was to create an alibi.
If incidents occurred in two different places on the same day, most people would assume that both were the work of the same culprit targeting Felix’s life.
That way, by being a victim in one of the incidents, Casey could divert suspicion from herself.
Here's what I think about it:
So, Casey was lying about hating Monica. In the novel it is pretty obvious that Casey was lying for the sake of hiding something, as you can see on the second spoiler.
She tried to use Monica to get to know about Felix's schedule, and she did those things to Monica to gain her trust. But since Monica found out about the tea incident and the rope incident, Casey had to come up with a lie on the spot, for the sake of her alibi. It would be strange that she caused an incident on the same day the second prince was assassinated (if she succeeded), so I think she was trying to pretend to be like those noble girls that poisoned Monica, so she would have a reason to "hate" Monica. At the very least, she wouldn't be suspected of terrorism, since other people would think her target was Monica
Thank you so much for the explanation and the parts of the novel, unfortunately the anime doesn't make it clear that his "hatred" was a farce and that he only wanted to get closer to Monica to have a better chance of hitting the prince, which of course is deducible because it's plausible but the hatred thing at first sight put me in difficulty because it's obvious that Casey wasn't a bad person and that she was driven by personal goals such as saving her country, but the fact that his hatred is only pretence is not shown very good, too bad because a simple sentence would have been enough.
continue this thread →It's pretty subtle but Monica deduces that Casey needed an alibi so that she wasn't suspected of the Spiralflame: "Was the accident earlier all for an alibi?" As such, you can work backwards from that to determine that Casey didn't actually hate Monica.
But you don't need to do any of that, because the anime is a visual medium. You can literally see that Casey is lying. She doesn't hate Monica. Her face shows nothing of hatred. She's smiling and carefree at first, and only shows emotion when she realizes Monica knows of the Spiralflame.
Anyways since I've already seen episode 9, their 'relationship' is made even clearer.
Superb source material. Superb adaptation.
it also felt needlessly complicated to activate the barrier, the thing that is supposed to protect from danger. i felt like i was missing information
The barrier can't protect from the inside, Monica said it after defeating the earth dragon, so she activated it by attacking from the outside and then used its power to cast the final spell. That's why Louis appeared in person as opposed to sending his maid, he sensed that someone is f-ing with the barrier.
It was complicated because she was hacking the barrier and rewriting the formula, to make the barrier do something that it wasn't supposed to do originally. But the barrier activated instantly when Monica attacked the school, since the barrier's original function is to protect from external attacks.
Silent Witch: Chinmoku no Majo no Kakushigoto #08
SB: Kanasaki Takaomi 金崎貴臣
ED: Kunimoto Ichio 國本一穂
WOW. This episode kicked off super chill with Monica and the girls having a tea party, and Claudia was messing around, teasing (setting up) her brother and Monica, and of course showing off those yandere vibes toward her poor (luck mf) fiancé.Partway through the episode, the tone shifted into an intense scheming assassination plot, with Casey revealed as the culprit. Really hurts to see this reveal hit right when Monica was opening up and looking forward to the horse-riding training and the festival. It’s even harder seeing her go through that, already knowing her friend was the one behind everything and kept quite about it. Casey’s political motives and her tragic backstory about her brothers made it even more intense.
I’m dying to see where this goes next, but man, after such a heavy episode, I really miss the cozy vibes. Please, no more making Monica cry.
Huge props to Kanasaki, he’s had a hand in every episode so far. Whether it’s scriptwriting, SB, or ED, he’s doing it all, absolute legend.
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN
I sure did not expect things to go down this direction.
This anime keeps surprising me and I love it.
I did not see this coming Casey was a Enemy/bully i m shocked i don't know what to say we just got done with bullies trying to harm her now one of her closest friends.. do we haft to call Isabelle again? i was so happy seeing her get friends but how whos friend and who foe
Considering it was a terrorism attempt this time, maybe they`ll call someone worse than Isabelle
Finally! A mc who is not hiding their true power and self even in the most dangerous situation. This made me love this anime even more.
Based on next week's title and what happened with the old student counsel overseer in episode 4, it seems like she might hide her true self with memory manipulation again. Either that or the prince's familiar is going to say that someone summoned the wind king, he's going to race to her, and then her secret will be revealed to him. I'm not totally sure if 「明かせぬ秘密」 is meant to be read like "hiding the secret" or read simply as "the revealed secret". Or I could be misreading it altogether because reading a language you're not great at is hard.
I'm an amateur like you but I think the -ぬ suffix in 明かせぬ means the secret (秘密) isn't revealed so I would go with the former, I read it something like 'the unrevealed secret' but that probably isn't right either since it sounds strange in this context.
Okay, who had "face heel turn" on their plot-twist-bingo card this week?
Noone?
Well, the prize will then roll over to next week. Place your bets now.
I'm placing my bet on "Monica will stutter and act like an adorable person who must be saved at all cost".
Anime was nice at the start, but then I became impatient and read the manga thanks to what now I can't enjoy the anime anymore.
Now the only thing I have left is frustration :( (I still try to enjoy what I can, but the skipping annoys me so much).They skip explanations, and calculations that are intricate to Monica's character and her motivations. They skipped the entire part with other Student Council members not acknowledging her, thanks to what when she thinks of stopping Spiralflame, but also before during the tea party with the villainess when she drank that poisoned tea, her motivation doesn't have any explanation or foundation. She keeps talking about being proper Student Council member, of doing her duty and not embarassing the Council, but there is no source of that desire because it was skipped. (Tho Spiralflame stopping was more weighty and dramatic than in the manga I give it that).
And then when she saved Casey the calculations were omitted and lumber was made into flimsy wimpy planks instead of the thick woodd piles that were in the manga, thanks to what the entire scene of saving Casey and discovering it was her comes off as underwhelming and too fast.
Also pacing. There are some scenes or entire arcs in this anime that suffer because certain scenes and explanations were skipped which makes the pacing of the story quicker and makes you feel like everything is going unnaturaly fast at times to slow down at other times. Not to mention that cutting off those explanatory pieces also took away screen time from characters such as Bridget whose entire lines were cut off. I don't know, maybe this is how it was in the novel and manga just added those lines for balance, but it feels really weird in comparison. (Someone who read the novel, please help and add your thoughts).
I read the novel, but it was quite a while ago, so I don’t remember it perfectly. Still, the level of detail is exactly as you described—I’d even say it’s a bit more detailed than the manga. So it’s really just the anime that’s cutting out scenes, which is honestly pretty sad. Like the first comment on this thread said, on the anime there was no explanation of why she had to use Louis's barrier instead of trying other methods, but Monica's thoughts are pretty detailed on the novel
Here's the snippet of the LN that I had answered on that comment:
“Please… I’m begging you, Casey… stop the Spiralflame…!”“No. Even if I were tortured, I would never stop the Spiralflame. Prince Felix’s assassination must be carried out to the end.”
(Should I use voice amplification magic to urge the entire student body to evacuate? …No, that won’t work. My words don’t carry enough weight; they won’t believe me. Should I use wind magic to blow only the Spiralflame into the sky? …No. The Spiralflame is a fixed-type magical device, so it’s probably anchored to the wall or floor. On top of that, it has the property of absorbing surrounding mana, so if I’m careless, it might explode the moment I try to activate my spell.)
In the end, the best option she can think of is to seal the Spiralflame inside a barrier and suppress its flames.
Monica is capable of using remote magic, so from here she can just barely manage to cast a barrier.
The problem is the barrier’s strength. The Spiralflame has enough destructive power to pierce through most barriers.
(If I pour all of my mana into it, I can weaken the Spiralflame’s power… but that’s not enough. Unless I completely suppress it, it’ll ignite the fireworks and cause a catastrophe. The barrier needs to be as strong as Mr. Louis’s…!)
The novel also explains very clearly that because the Spiralflame has the power to break through most magician's barriers, it's also called "Mage Killer", so even someone as powerful as Monica had to borrow Louis's barrier to be able to suppress it completely
Thank you for your addition! I'm now even sadder tho :(
Manga is pretty focused on how analytical Monica is, as well as divulges all her anxieties, which anime simply doesn't do despite the fact that it can.
Now that you mentioned the barier I remember that manga also explained that Spiralflame can pierce most barriers but Louse's barrier was assumed an exception because it was made by a Sage. I don't remember if it was explained but this is what I assumed from what was said, that Louse barriers were top tier and there were none like his so it could be used to stop Spiralflame. Fireworks were also mentioned in the manga as a possible reagent with Spiralflame. And ofc anime doesn't do that. The action scene and music were nice, but the total omission of Monica's rationate when her entire character is about being logical to the point she gave the Prince an infodump on golden ratio (she is basically very autistic) just won't do. They just cut it or turn focus from logical aspect to comedic aspect of it instead.
Anime is cutting corners and the characters and the plot are suffering for it! ToT
It's also sad that they are cutting this rational side of Monica, where it explain all her thoughts and calculations, because on the novel it's shown that she if the situation demands it, she can shut out all emotion and react to any situation logically, stopping being that shy girl that she always is. This is pretty important to her development, because later on the story
(About this first spoiler, the manga still hasn't reached this part, so read at your own accord.)
there's a case she fails to shut out all of her emotions in the middle of a fight and letting the enemy escape because of this, since the enemy start threatening to kill her friends, and until now, she never had any people she cared about besides her late father, but now she's starting to care for her friends. It's basically showing that she's losing that machine side of her and becoming more human, and this is a good thing, but it also means that now she's got a weaknessThis next spoiler is safe if you already read the chapter 26 of the manga:
I hope they at least doesn't cut out the part where Felix notices that someone summoned the spirit king on the school grounds and start suspecting that the Silent Witch is on his school, since the anime left out that scene where Felix find Nero carrying Cyril's body when he had that incident where his mana got out of control. Felix knowing Nero was on the school was one of the factors that made him sure that the Silent Witch was on the school, since later he gets to know that Nero is the Silent Witch's servantI wouldn't call shutting down emotions "a machine side" tbh as it's very human behavior to try to shut out emotions when you can't deal with them due to trauma. It's not by any means healthy human reaction but a human reaction nonetheless. So she doesn't "become more human". She just "heals her trauma" and that's what I think this story is about - healing Monica's heart. It's just the vibe I'm getting so her "failing" to shut her emorions is ironically a good sign for her mental health.
(My "spoiler" function doesn't work for some reason so I'm trying not to spoil as much as I can).Oh yeah I also found the whole "Felix didn't see Nero" weird. It was in the manga.
Tbf, LN anime adaptations cutting content is pretty much the norm by now, not that I say it's not sad, but you also have to think about the production team behind the anime. They have a tight schedule, limited budget and limited amount of episodes they can use. If they cut no content, the anime would likely be double the length, which they likely coudn't afford, either that or it had to do with licensing/contract issues or smth.
In the end I try to appreciate it as what it is, I mean for me personally (I haven't read the LN or manga) you don't feel the cut content too much, which is already more than enough for me, there are examples like Unnamed Memory where you feel the cut content even if you haven't read the source materialCutting content should be done with logic. If the content is cut in a way that hurts the anime and the characters, then it'd be better to make the anime into more seasons instead and stretch the story in order to accomodate. I don't think an anime studio can't afford to do something unless it's a small indie studio. I don't trust corporations on principle and I feel for the animators who have to work under such conditions and not only get overworked but deliver worse than they know they can do because some executives decided the anime doesn't deserve more funds. I feel a cut content a lot here because it hurts the pacing and the character that is the protagonist. I believe criticism should be given where it's due, no matter the circumstances. I feel for the stuff, but won't for the studio as it's their responsibility to do it well.
(To clarify: I mean here the criticism like the one movie critics do for various movies. I do it for books, comics and anime).
I've made this mistake before, never again. Never read the manga if you want to enjoy the anime.
That's not a mistake. If the studio can't take responsibility and do the anime right it's on them. I don't always watch anime and read manga together. Sometimes I only read manga, and don't watch anime at all (I did it with Bleach), or only watch anime and read no manga (I did it with Dragon Ball), only sometimes I do both, but even then I never had such issues as I did with Silent Witch. I can understand the difference in adaptation from LN as manga and anime don't have to have the same approach. But here? Anime is not only skipping explanations that are essential to audience's understanding of the story's arcs, but is also skipping the core of the character. It's as if you skipped what's the most important about the protagonist's personality / hero's journey. I wouldn't mind if they skipped something not important (like Monica's stay at Isabelle's room), but this IS important as it's Monica's CORE personality trait that drives her as a character and informs her motivations. It's an unforgivable mistake.
Wall of text not reading all that. Knowing what will happen next kills the tension and my enjoyment.
Well I definitely wasn't expecting that.. I'm a bit late to this week's episode so I've been really trying avoid spoilers since everywhere I looked people were talking about it (ᵕ—ᴗ—)
We must protect Monica's smile no matter what!!
I'm starting to like Claudia more and more every episode. She's definitely slightly unhinged but she doesn't have bad intentions. The way she acts is so funny as well. Teasing Cyril and getting Monica to call him by his first name.
Now, for the big twist in the episode. I'm not sure why Casey said she hates Monica that much that she would purposefully drop planks of wood on her and throw away her tea. Faking your personality and befriending others to achieve your goal I understand, but throwing Monica's tea in the trash doesn't benefit her mission in any way.
There's definitely two sides to the story for Casey and a lot of politics is involved. I don't think trying to commit murder is justifiable in any circumstance so I can't really back her on that. Could the empire have done something to help her town? Yes. Is trying to assasinate the prince to guarantee another person becomes the King the correct choice? No. There's definitely alternative methods she could've pursued if she truly wanted to help her hometown. Ultimately though, she just felt powerless and she became consumed by the thought that killing the prince was the only way. Whether or not she was forced to do this remains unknown.
I'm glad to see Monica is now able to affirm her resolve under high stress situations. There's a lot of people that are important to her now and she needs to be there to save them because that's something only she can do.
I guess even Monica has to do chants when doing some high powered spells. I feel like this will be more relevant in future fight scenes if we get there.
I'm surprised Felix and his familiar never noticed the Spiralflame getting stronger and stronger when they're literally right beside it. Nero noticed it right away and went to warn Monica so I assumed Felix's familiar would also be the same. Was this a test by Felix to see if Monica was truly protecting him? Or did he just genuinely not know and almost died because of it?
I wonder what will happen to Casey. It's attempted murder so I don't think they will go easy on her. I still think there was someone manipulating her in the shadows and she had no choice in the matter. Monica will probably try to stop Louis from taking Casey into interrogation but her mana is drained so that might be a tough fight..
never in my entire life thought the name Sheffield would come in an anime like this XDD
What's that a reference to
not sure it has references here, but Sheffield is a city in the UK where I am currently doing my degree at the University of Sheffield XD
That stuck out to me, too.
Sheffield was a huge center of steel production in the UK. I'm not from the UK, but I remember that because the decline of the steel industry there is the backdrop of the movie The Full Monty.
That one hurt... :(
We got Monica cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner today, her English VA is pretty awesome, she switched her tone so seriously when needed (8:55), showing Monica really cares about Casey even though she knew she was doing something fishy. I was in beyond shock and hated Casey for betraying Monica but idk i feel like she can be forgiven, she really opened up at the end but we still need to dispose of her, she made Monica sad and we don't tolerate that
That indeed was a great episode. Also never thought Casey was going to betray Monica. I feel pretty bad about that and how she made Monica cry. It was also nice to see Nero have some time to shine as well.
I wonder what’s going to happen to Casey now. I don’t really want anything bad to happen to her, despite her hurting Monica, because I think deep inside, Monica also doesn’t want anything to happen to Casey as well. Louis is very cold, but he’s also pragmatic and will listen to reason if there is any. Plus, he has a soft spot for Monica, so maybe he will be okay with being easy on Casey if Monica also feels that way.
That was such a well-executed plot twist. They made Casey seem so friendly and likable, and that she was this unpretentious and down-to-earth country noble. But it turned out that being a country noble was a source of disparity between her and the more cosmopolitan nobles, and she felt compelled to make an attempt on the prince's life because of that.
I'm so disappointed, because not only did Casey seem so likable, she also resembled the extremely likable Natsuki Nakagawa from Sound! Euphonium.
Welp, I can't wait for next week's episode to show what the fallout from this drama is, and what happens to Casey. (But I actually will wait, because I'm seeing comments in here saying that the source material handled the story better than the anime, but I don't want to ruin my enjoyment of the anime, so I'm going to wait until the season is over to check out the LN.)
It felt like a bit more internal monologue or other characters pov could've been given as others in the thread have already pointed out. I was left wondering why she couldn't mind control casey to make her reveal the deactivation password lol
